Day
5 Grounded by Winds (+0 Miles) November 30, 2007: Migration Day 49

Fourth
graders at Alexander Middle School in Wisconsin hung 17 paper
cranes from their ceiling. The cranes will stay there until
the Class of 2007 crane-kids reaches Florida. These kids made
more than 1,000 other cranes raise money to help
the cranes reach Florida. Meet them! >>

Same story
again today in Washington County, Kentucky: calm on the ground, headwinds
aloft. Joe calculated that today's wind speed
would mean almost 3 hours of hard work for the birds to reach the
stopover.
With #733 safely back in the fold,"everybirdy's" restless to fly south!

Counting
the World's Whoopers
The number of wild whoopers that have now arrived in Texas from
Canada is 258. Four more cranes have been seen along the migration
route. That brings the grand total in the natural (Western) flock
to a record-setting 262! The final
new count will be taken late
in December. In the new Eastern flock, 24 young cranes are making
their first migration
south.
That's
almost twice the number of Whooping Cranes that existed in the world
60 years ago. A whopping thanks to all who are working so hard to
bring this endangered species back from the brink of extinction!

Today's
Journal Question: (a) What did Joe
need to know in order to calculate how long it would take the birds
to fly to the next
stopover? (b-for-bonus) Have you ever used a GPS?
How does a GPS help the pilots? Hear Joe's
answer. See our GPS lesson.>>

Migration
History: Where were the cranes last year on the last
day of November? >>